An elegant and affable TV sidekick

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After Sir Robert and Dame Pattie Menzies, Bob and Dolly Dyer
were probably the most recognised double act in Australia in the
1960s. As Bob's partner and helpmate on the television quiz show
Pick-a-Box, Dolly was the model wife. She was immaculately
groomed, smartly but not extravagantly dressed, always smiling and
quietly spoken, with not quite a drawl but a distinctly BBC-free
Australian accent.

Thelma Phoebe McLean, an only child, grew up in Sydney's eastern
suburbs. Her father, an engineer, died when she was young and she
remained close to her mother ("Mrs Mack"), who lived with Bob and
Dolly until her death. By 1940 Thelma, now known as Dolly Mack, was
living in Bondi with her mother and was employed as one of the
showgirls at Sydney's Tivoli Theatre. She was not a dancer but one
of the six or so tall, leggy beauties with high-feathered
headdresses. They didn't dance, they strolled.

One day in August that year, Bob was running into the Tivoli to
do his act while Dolly was dashing out, against the rules, to buy
ice-creams for the dancers. They collided. He asked her out to
Prince's Restaurant that night. After seeing each other for the
next nine nights, Bob proposed and Dolly responded: "Yes, darling,
I will."

Nine days later they were married at St John's, Darlinghurst.
The reception was held between shows on the last day of the The
Crazy Show. The next day the show went to Brisbane so they
spent their honeymoon in Surfers Paradise in a borrowed car. Bob
said he liked the fact that Dolly was never "show businessy".

Bob Dyer was born Bob Dies in Nashville, Tennessee, the son of a
sharefarmer. Of course his name would have killed any career in
entertainment so he chose the more lively Dyer. He had left school
at 12 and worked as a dish-washer, cab driver, ice man, carpenter,
milk-bar attendant and railway freight hand before taking to the
stage.

Dyer arrived in Sydney for the first time in 1937 as a member of
the Marcus Show; his act was a hillbilly and ukulele turn. He had
returned to Australia, billed as "the last of the hillbillies", the
year he ran into Dolly.

During World War II, he and Dolly entertained Australian and
American troops, performing in war zones in New Guinea and the
Solomon Islands.

Bob encouraged Dolly to enrol in Miss Hale's Business Academy
where she learnt typing and shorthand. The enterprising Bob would
pick up broadcasts by Jack Benny, Fred Allen and Bob Hope on his
shortwave radio and Dolly would take down their lines in shorthand
so that Bob could use them for his own show.

Bob soon established himself as a radio star with shows
successively sponsored by Solvol, Atlantic Union Oil ("Happy
motoring, customers") and Colgate-Palmolive ("Happy lathering,
customers"). The last of these featured secret sounds. Bob's
tearing a plaster off his arm drew 8million entries. Brownie, the
family kelpie, scratched fleas, their cat lapped milk, their budgie
ate seed.

Can You Take It? was another of Bob's programs - a radio
series of scrapes and dares, designed to outdo a similar show by
his friend and rival Jack Davey.

In 1948, when he was also compering Winner Take All and
Cop The Lot, Bob's career took a more serious turn when he
launched Pick-a-Box on radio. He checked his hillbilly twang
and replaced his yellow boots and loud checks with a respectable
suit, tie and glasses.

In 1957, Pick-a-Box made its television debut and for the
next five years it was simulcast (until 1959, only Sydney and
Melbourne had television). Broadcast on Saturday nights and
sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive and later by BP, Pick-a-Box
was the first big quiz show on national television.

Bob always opened Pick-a-Box with "Howdy, customers!" and
the show followed a basic formula. Contestants were asked questions
and got to choose a box. Bob would ascertain the contents and would
offer to buy the prize for steadily increasing sums of money. It
might be a packet of musk sticks or a fur coat; a car or a brass
washer. It had tremendous appeal to viewers at the time - a clever
blend of acquired knowledge and avarice.

Dolly's job went beyond the handmaiden's role on screen. Bob
would not meet contestants until they appeared on camera, but Dolly
would spend some time chatting with them and calming them down. In
1970, one highly strung contestant overdosed on sedatives on his
way to the studio. He was so drowsy by the time he reached the set
that Dolly sent him home in a taxi.

She also had a calming effect on Bob when things went wrong on
the set. In those less complex days when everything was, literally,
black and white, she had the natural appeal of everywoman.

In 1960, following the scripted routine, Bob asked: "Who's our
next contestant, Dolly?" She responded: "Bob, this is Barry Jones,
a teacher from Caulfield."

And so began the public career of brilliant, young, intense,
combative, moustachioed Barry Owen Jones. Beneath huge headphones
or inside the isolation booth, his extraordinary knowledge would
astonish viewers for the next eight years.

In that time Barry Jones won $58,000 in money and prizes. Bob
was careful to limit the size of the prizes, mindful of the scandal
involving Charles van Doren in the US (the subject of the film
Quiz Show). As Jones notes in his forthcoming biography A
Thinking Reed: "I hoped that after leaving the show Bob and I
might become friends. This sounds preposterous, but after 208
appearances spread over eight years we had been careful not to
develop a personal relationship. We had an unspoken understanding
not to do anything that suggested even the slightest possibility of
collusion, and until 1968 I never spoke to him without a third
party being present."

Another contestant much loved by viewers was Frank Partridge, a
dairy and banana farmer from northern NSW who had won the Victoria
Cross in Bougainville in 1945. According to an entry by Jones in
the Australian Dictionary of Biography, after the war
Partridge returned to the farm where he lived with his father and
devoted himself to self-education, reading the Encyclopaedia
Britannica by kerosene lamp at night. He was one of only three
contestants to win all 40 boxes, with prizes worth £12,000.
His unsophisticated, laconic manner endeared him to many
viewers.

In March 1964 Partridge was killed in a car accident and for
some weeks afterwards Dolly's sparkle and Bob's hearty banter were
missing.

In the late 1950s the Dyers bought two acres (0.8 hectares) of
harbourside land at Beauty Point. By then, they reportedly earned
more than the prime minister. In 1961 Woman's Day claimed
Bob had the largest "personal exertion income" of anyone in
Australia. It was reported the Dyers entertained "lavishly", but in
truth their social life was quiet and largely self-contained.

In 1971 Bob announced his and Dolly's retirement and in June of
that year, a few weeks before the last Pick-a-Box was
screened, they both featured in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.
Bob, who retained his US citizenship, was made an honorary OBE.
Dolly happily accepted an MBE. When they received their honours the
NSW governor, Sir Roden Cutler, not generally known for his humour,
asked Bob if he wanted to take the medal or the box it was in.

Free of the box, they headed north to pursue Bob's other great
love (apart from Dolly) - big-game fishing. Dolly had felt that she
should share her husband's interests so, many years before, she had
taken up the rod and reel and, as she put it, was soon hooked.

For years, she broke records - in 1966, she caught a
297-kilogram black marlin, breaking a 12-year women's record.
Between them, Dolly and Bob broke 50 world and 150 Australian
records. Tourist boats and buses would circle their home on
Queensland's Isle of Capri, announcing on loudspeakers this was
"the home of Bob 'n' Dolly Dyer".

In the late 1970s, they sold the house and retreated to a
high-rise apartment. Bob's eyesight and health faded and he became
reclusive until his death in 1984. Dolly was devastated. Bob had
boasted that since their wedding in 1940 they had never spent a
night apart.

After a few years, Dolly emerged from mourning. Her saviours
were Les Rider and his wife Rae who reintroduced her to her first
love, dancing.

In 1989, the three began to attend Les Salmon's Danceland
Ballroom at Coolangatta. Within a few years, Dolly, partnered by
Les (he also partnered Rae), was winning gold medals in
competitions. For the next decade, Dolly danced up to five days a
week, skilfully executing the cha cha, the rhumba, the jive, the
pasa doble and Barclay blues.

Performing again delighted her. Still elegant, her short, dark
hair now grey but blonde-tipped, she loved to trip the light
fantastic; and yet she eschewed the limelight. She entertained
nursing-home patients, some not much older than herself, and took
up marathon walking. And she began fishing again.

Contrary to expectations, Dolly's life after Bob was a fulfilled
and quietly happy one. Her last days were in Gympie, where the
Riders had a house.

On Pick-a-Box every day seemed like Christmas, so it
seemed somehow fitting that it was on Christmas Day that the
83-year-old Dolly died.